I'm a privacy pragmatist, writing about the intersection of law, technology, social media and our personal information. If you have story ideas or tips, e-mail me at khill@forbes.com. PGP key here.
These days, I'm a senior online editor at Forbes. I was previously an editor at Above the Law, a legal blog, relying on the legal knowledge gained from two years working for corporate law firm Covington & Burling -- a Cliff's Notes version of law school.
In the past, I've been found slaving away as an intern in midtown Manhattan at The Week Magazine, in Hong Kong at the International Herald Tribune, and in D.C. at the Washington Examiner. I also spent a few years traveling the world managing educational programs for international journalists for the National Press Foundation.
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Internet Freak-out Over Google's New Privacy Policy Proves Again That No One Actually Reads Privacy Policies

Google has the world calling it evil once again. (That’s at least the third time in 2012. Kudos, Google.) This time it’s thanks to a blog post Tuesday by Google’s director of privacy announcing the company’s plans to turn its 70+ privacy policies into just one that will apply to all of Google’s products, from Gmail to Picasa to YouTube. Along with simplifying its privacy policy, Google is planning to have more overlap in your information from different services:

Our new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, we may combine information you’ve provided from one service with information from other services. In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.

Google has already given us a taste of that with the awkwardly-named “Search Plus Your World” (SPYW) — which merges Google+ with Google search to give you more personal results. In a blog post tearing Google a new one and transforming Sergey Brin and Larry Page into evil demons via Photoshop, Mat Honan at Gizmodo calls this a “privacy policy shift.” Actually, it’s not.

Google keeps an archive of its privacy policies. Since at least October 2005 (!), the company has stated in the “Information you provide” section: “We may combine the information you submit under your account with information from other Google services or third parties in order to provide you with a better experience and to improve the quality of our services.”

What’s changing is not Google’s privacy policies but its practices. By combining information from across all of its services, Google will be able to better target users with ads, offer more innovative features, and, importantly for Google, better compete with Facebook. Fellow Forbes writer David DiSalvo says Google is “saying goodbye to user privacy.” I hate to tell you all, but Google already knew all these things about you — to get a sense of how much Google knows about you, check out the Dashboard — and already had permission to combine that info, they’re just now actually going to do that. And kudos to them for being so explicit about that.

Over at TechCrunch, Devin Coldewey says the quick leap to calling Google evil shows that the tech press is currently biased against them.

Everyone wants so badly for Google to do something truly evil (instead of just questionable or inconvenient) that their perceptions of Google actions are actually being affected. Casting events systematically in a non-objective light is the exhibition of bias, and the continual presentation of policies one disagrees with as evidence of “evil” seems to fall under that category.

When Google starts bundling everything it knows about its users and selling that to insurance companies, background check companies, and the Department of Homeland Security, that’s when I’ll trot out the “evil label.” But using information from Gmail to suggest more appropriate YouTube videos or reminding an Android smartphone user that they have a Google calendar appointment in a half hour on the other side of town doesn’t strike me as the work of Lucifer.

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No no, I get that, it’s just that some of the stuff in my email inbox is best left exactly where it is. I don’t want to be perusing the Google news feed and see ads based on some…unscrupulous email I might receive, nor do I want to see ads in my email based on some things I may have browsed previously. ESPECIALLY if I’m checking my email at a friend’s house or public area, where someone could see that stuff over my shoulder. I’m a private person (as much as I can be in this age), and I’d like it to stay like that.

I think the problem here is framing this as a privacy issue. There’s no change in the information that Google has about you, but rather in the way that it’s used. You may see that as a violation of your existing agreement with Google (though as I point out above, it’s not a change in the terms of their privacy policy). That’s a valid concern, though I think the solution is to going to have to be that you change your product consumption. Use Microsoft’s search service Bing, Google for email, Yahoo for mapping, Facebook for social networking, etc., so that you spread your information around in ways that it can’t be consolidated.

I get that there is no change in what’s being collected. I understood that from the get-go. And as a matter of fact, I do read over the EULA of most software or services I use. I mean, I don’t inspect it, but enough to understand what they’re getting across. I just don’t want ads popping up about marijuana seed banks and paraphernalia because I joined a forum to read about how it’s grown. Or porn, for that matter.

And Bing?? Not only no, but HELL no. Bing is a travesty of a search engine.

“When Google starts bundling everything it knows about its users and selling that to insurance companies, background check companies, and the Department of Homeland Security, that’s when I’ll trot out the “evil label.” But using information from Gmail to suggest more appropriate YouTube videos or reminding an Android smartphone user that they have a Google calendar appointment in a half hour on the other side of town doesn’t strike me as the work of Lucifer.”

Then it’s just too late…you clip the birds wings before it learns how to fly.

“When Department of Homeland Security, that’s when I’ll trot out the “evil label.” I suggest you read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Google#Potential_for_data_disclosure Numerous instances when Google has shared data or censored data with government agencies all over the world. Perhaps the agglomeration and sharing of personal data on internet and computers all over the world is inevitable. Personally, I oppose any movement in that direction not for the clear and present danger, but for the grave and growing threat.

I will agree with one overriding sentiment that has been expressed in a few other articles on this topic: it was silly to think Google would not eventually do this. Everyone using Google should have expected it, as we should expect the same from any company with control of so many of the online services we use every day. After all, no one is forcing us to use them. The particular outrage aimed at Google stems more from its misleading messages all these years. But, again, we all should have know they were merely advertising slogans, not statements of fact.

From Google’s perspective, this means they can come up with ‘cool new features’ based on more data about users. To you, though, this means that Google is now abusing the access that you’ve given it to your information across a wide array of products. The problem with the term ‘evil’ its subjectivity. (Using it in their motto may be one of the company’s long-term regrets.)

Hooray and thanks for the article… many iphoners, macbookers and forbidden fruit worshippers are willing to quote the internet thugs like, Anonymous, as if they were someone to listen to in the efforts to bash Google… how naïve.

Some seem to hold that Apple can do no evil… What? An overpriced over rated artsy UI with (up until recently) limited choices of applications and a cult following reminiscent of Area 51 conspiracy advocates. On one hand I sense a high level of disdain for Google behaving like a free enterprise market driven entity yet, who has the most bucks? No disrespect intended but I’ve not heard the two Stanford kids talk about destroying any of their competitors. Don’t like Google…stop using it.